An art book connected to Sarnia’s deadly legacy of asbestos disease sold out a small first press run this spring before the publisher could even officially announce its launch.

Atlanta-based Yoffy Press said it’s already planning a second edition of A Field Guide to Asbestos by Louie Palu, a Canadian photojournalist who began a 15-year investigation into the impact of asbestos after travelling to Sarnia in 2003 to meet the late Blayne Kinart.

The Sarnia millwright was one of many in the city who has died from mesothelioma, a fatal cancer caused by breathing in asbestos fibers once widely used in construction and industries of what’s known as Chemical Valley.

Palu’s black and white photos of Kinart were published by the Globe and Mail in 2004 with a story about Sarnia’s experience as an asbestos disease hot spot, under the headline “Dying for a living.”

Kinart died later that year.

“His photos shook it up” said Sandy Kinart, Blayne’s widow and a member of Victims of Chemical Valley – a group formed to push for a ban on asbestos and better medical care for those with workplace disease.

The incidence of mesothelioma in men in Sarnia was approximately five times the Ontario average in the years 2000 to 2009, and three times the provincial average in women.

When Palu’s photos were first published, “there was a lot of backlash,” Kinart said.

“It was not nice. The problem was it was the dirty secret that nobody talked about.”

But the widows and children of the community’s victims of asbestos disease talked about it anyway, and the tide eventually turned.

Asbestos mines in Quebec closed and, earlier this year a federal ban went into effect prohibiting the importing, sale and use of asbestos and products containing asbestos in Canada, with some exceptions.

“His pictures really opened up the book and allowed the stories to be told,” Kinart said.

Palu’s work documenting the lives of hard-rock miners led a representative for injured workers to encourage him to seek out Blayne Kinart.

Palu, who worked for the Globe and Mail at the time, said he began driving to Sarnia on his own time to spend time with Kinart and his family.

“He wanted to show me what he looked like,” Palu said about how Kinart was willing to expose himself.

“He was definitely an activist and he really understood the power of visuals.”

In the years that followed, Palu continued to photograph what asbestos was doing to people and the landscape in places around the world.

“I never meant it be a book, but over the course of 15 years it just kept coming up,” he said.

While rules about the use of asbestos have tightened in many places, it still exists in buildings and materials, and mesothelioma appears many years after its victims were exposed to the fibers.

“People thought it was over,” Palu said.

“If you look at the statistics, it’s not over at all. There are thousands of people dying every year of it.”

Palu and publisher Jennifer Yoffy had already worked together on a book of his work documenting the war in Afghanistan, and they created A Field Guide to Asbestos with a unique format.

“It looks like an industrial manual that might come with a piece of machinery, or something,” Palu said.

It begins with a childhood family photo of Blayne Kinart and his brother Harold Kinart taken in 1952, and includes several of the photos Palu took of Blayne in 2003.

There are also photos of other asbestos disease victims, asbestos mines, homes in poor rural India made from broken asbestos roof tiles, New York City’s ground zero where the collapse of the World Trade Centre was one of the largest single uncontrolled releases of asbestos in the history of the U.S.

There is an essay by Palu, plus one by a U.S. scholar of documentary photography. It also includes information about asbestos disease from the Center for Disease Control and a “conversation” with Robin Howie, a physicist and occupational hygienist.

And, at the end, there are family photos of asbestos victims, including a 1994 photo of brothers Blayne and Harold Kinart in middle age.

Harold, a plumber and pipefitter, died of mesothelioma in 2018.

“There’s a very particular way this disease looks,” Palu said.

“It’s very tragic and I think people need to see what it looks like in the people who are affected by it.”

Yoffy said the 250 copies of the book’s first run quickly sold out online and at two book fairs they took it to in the spring.

“It was pretty incredible.”

Yoffy said people at the book fairs told her stories about relatives and neighbours killed by mesothelioma.

“I was really blown away by how many people it affected.”

Beginning this week, pre-orders for a second printing will be taken online at yoffypress.com.